The shell script starts by downloading even more resources, then looking for – and killing – competing BitCoin mining processes. Finally, it starts its own BitCoin miner. I’ll describe the downloaded components:

The first file it downloads (art-061574.png) is, after extraction, a binary:

We see that the script executes the first downloaded component (the ELF binary) with the other downloaded component as its config. Since this compromise never obtained root privileges, root’s cron jobs were never impacted.

The interesting about this compromise was not the binaries themselves, nor the fact that the JBoss server was vulnerable – but the covert transport mechanisms. We found no less than four different BitCoin miner binaries in the JBoss account’s home directory, indicating that several bots have been fighting over this server. As an additional bonus, the following entry was found in the JBoss account’s crontab: